Libertine Fashion

Sexual Freedom, Rebellion, and Style

Adam Geczy, Vicki Karaminas

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Visual Arts
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781350054097
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sozialwissenschaften
• Subtopic: Kultur- & Sozialanthropologie

Shortlisted for the Association of Dress Historians Book of the Year Award, 2021 Libertine practices have long been associated with transgression and social deviance. This innovative book is the first to focus fully on the relationship between libertinism as a social phenomenon and as a form of fashion. Taking the reader from early modernity to the present day, Adam Geczy and Vicki Karaminas reveal how the connection between clothing and the taboo, the erotic, and the forbidden is at the heart of "libertine fashion". Moving from the decadent courts of Charles II and Louis XV to the catwalks of the 21st century, Libertine Fashion examines literary and sartorial figures ranging from the Marquis de Sade and Lord Byron to Oscar Wilde, Josephine Baker, Colette, and Madonna. Focusing on libertinism as a sartorial practice and identity, this book traces the genealogy of the concept through the proto feminists of the English Reformation, the hedonistic decadents of the fin de siècle, and the Flappers of the Roaring 20s. The historical arc traverses the 1970s era of punk and glam, the shapeshifting personae of David Bowie, and the "disciplinary regimes" of Jean-Paul Gaultier. Looking at libertine practices and appearances with fresh eyes, this bracing and original book affords many new insights into transgressive style, and of the relationship between sexuality and clothing. Accessible and thoroughly researched, Libertine Fashion uses a multidisciplinary approach that draws on historical literature, film, fashion, philosophy, and popular culture. Offering a historical and philosophical grounding in contemporary forms of identity and dress, it is essential reading for students and scholars of fashion, gender, sexuality, and cultural studies.

1

THE MERRY AND SCANDALOUS COURT OF KING CHARLES II

The return of Charles II (Figure 1.1) to London from exile on the Continent in 1660 was greeted with fanfare and jubilation. He was triumphantly escorted with his entourage through the streets of England’s capital to Westminster Abbey, where he was to be crowned King of England, Scotland and Ireland. He then took up residency at Whitehall Palace, close to where, eleven years earlier, his father Charles I had been tried and beheaded for treason. The seventeenth-century historian James Hearth wrote of the coronation that:

it is incredible to think what costly clothes were worn that day: the cloaks could hardly be seen what silk or satin they were made of, for the gold and the silver laces and embroidery that were laid upon them: besides the inestimable value and treasures of diamonds, pearls and other jewels, worn upon their backs and in their hats: to omit the sumptuous and rich liveries of their pages and footmen: the numerousness of these liveries, and their orderly march; as also the stately equipage of the esquires attending each earl by his horses side: so that all the world saw it.¹

When Charles arrived, dandified and penniless, the people regarded him with suspicion and uncertainty. They had survived years of harsh austerity measures under Oliver Cromwell’s Puritan rule and attempts at eradicating swearing, gambling, and drunkenness had been, to some degree, successful. As Alexander Bernham explains: “[f]rivolous dancing had been forbidden, adultery was punishable by death and Christmas was condemned because it gave liberty to carnal and sensual delights.”² It is difficult to refute the claim that the first flush of the Restoration England was a libertine age.

The king’s return was accompanied by his loyal supporters, the cavalier aristocracy “with their particular brand of hedonistic royalty,” to use the words of N. H. Keeble.³ They wore their hair in flowing ringlets under their plumed beaver hats and their brightly colored clothing was trimmed with cuffs and collars. Their dress was extravagant and flamboyant compared starkly to Oliver Cromwell’s supporters, the Roundheads, who wore somber clothing devoid of any ornamental trims, reflecting their proudly worn principles of austerity and abstinence.⁴ Under the new post-Restoration climate, the rule of Charles II was marked by all kinds of debauchery. The theater re-opened to great acclaim, gentlemen began wearing foppish coats, pantaloons, and long French wigs, prostitution increased, and a crime wave spread across London.⁵ Twenty-five years later, and five years after the death of Charles II, inspired by a revival of religious fervor, Societies for the Reformation of Manners were established in London and the provinces, the sole task of which was to concern themselves with eradicating sodomy, prostitution, and other kinds of so-called gross indecencies. After years of civil war and puritanical rule, social disorder was attributed to female disorder: women were considered either pious and obedient or lascivious whores. In sum, there were two moral orders towards the later seventeenth century: puritan reformers on the one hand and aristocratic rakes on the other. In her study of authority in Restoration England, Susan Kingsley Kent argues that in contrast to the puritan concepts of decency, sobriety, and propriety, the aristocratic rake was loud and riotous. He drank, ate and fornicated in excess and insulted women.⁶

Figure 1.1 Portrait of Charles II of England (1630–85), c. 1676, by John Michael Wright (1617–94). Found in the Collection of Royal Collection, London. (Photo by Fine Art Images/Heritage Images via Getty Images.)

Known as the “libertine king,” or the “merry monarch”, King Charles II and his court were considered the most hedonistic court in English history, one that comprised of sexual liaisons, seductions, and infidelities. Philip Chesney Yorke of Magdalen College, Oxford, described Charles as an “indolent, sensual and dissipated” king whose vices surpassed “all the bounds of decency and control.”⁷ Still, Fergus Linnane contends that “Charles II brought back colour and glamour to a moribund court and pleasure to a nation starved of both.”⁸ “Right from the very beginning when Charles the II was coronated, he led a licentious lifestyle.”⁹ He was known for his love of theater, drinking, and sexual trysts. He would often roam the streets of London in disguise, visiting houses of ill-repute with other libertines from the royal court, including the notorious rake, John Wilmot, the 2nd Earl of Rochester. Masquerades were also a popular form of entertainment in the Restoration court and theatrical costume was often hired for private affairs and for performances.¹⁰ Charles II was “tall and confident,” writes Norman Milne, “witty and affable, [and took] to wearing a periwig in his early thirties due to greying hair.”¹¹

The royal court soon became, as Linnane says, “one vast brothel”¹² populated by courtesans, royalists, and aristocratic libertine mistresses; the elegant Barbara Villiers, who took on many lovers and gambled excessively; the beautiful Louise de Kérouaille; and the vivacious Hortense Mancini, who often enjoyed the company of female lovers. For their services, made them all countesses or duchesses. Charles also had sexual liaisons with many stage actresses—Mistress White, Mistress Weaver, Moll Davies, and the witty Eleanor “Nell” Gwyn—all of whom would produce a long line of illegitimate progeny that Charles would accept and on whom he would confer royal titles. “To be a libertine, or arguably a courtesan or a mistress was in a way socially acceptable amongst the so called high-social class,”¹³ notes Milne, and “Charles did not seem to mind if an older mistress of his strayed into the arms of another lover.”¹⁴ There were many married courtesans who happily shared their beds with Charles in exchange for financial rewards, or for the love of king and country.

The Fashion Choices of the Libertine King

The monarchy was abolished after the execution of Charles I in 1649 and England was declared first a Republic, then a Protectorate, under the puritanical rule of Oliver Cromwell. As a young man, Charles had spent a great deal of time in exile with his cousin Louis XIV in the French court at Versailles, the cultural center of Europe and of courtly life. Charles’s time in Europe exposed him to a variety of styles and ideas concerning fashion which not only influenced his own appearance in court, but also reshaped gender dynamics in Britain. French fashion had dominated English style and dress, so much so, that Edward Chamberlayne noted in Anglea Notitia, or The Present State of England (1669), a handbook on the political and social conditions of England, that “the apparel or clothing the French Mode hath been generally used in England of late years.”¹⁵ Arthur Bryant claims that Charles’s embrace of the French style achieved “a change on English taste far greater than any transient turn of fashion. For it affected everything, our [English] architecture, our dress, food and manners, our books, our whole attitude of life.”¹⁶ A few year earlier, the diarist John Evelyn wrote a satirical essay titled “Tyrannus, or The Mode” (1661), in which he criticized the English for imitating French styles and ridiculed French fashion. “It was a fine silken thing which I spied walking th’ other day,”¹⁷ he writes, covered with “as much Ribbon … as would have plundered six shops, and set up twenty Country Peddlars.” The wearer “resembled a ‘May-Pole” or a “Fregat newly rigg’d with as much wind and motion.” Evelyn called for the newly crowned Charles to “fix a standard at court … Not only to his own Nation, but to all the World besides.”¹⁸ A portrait of Evelyn executed by Robert Walker in 1648 towards the end of the Civil War depicts him in a state of déshabille, the informal, come-hither and domestic look of the libertine, although it is not exclusive to him. It can also be taken as the coarser face of the debonair, licentious man-about-town. His right hand rests his head, a dark cloak is thrown over one shoulder of his collarless shirt, and his left hand fondles a skull. Although not intended to be an image of a libertine, it can be included in the genre. For Evelyn is represented as resigned to his fate and imminent death, his bearing and his clothing offering nothing to mitigate the fact.

Unlike his father Charles I, who favored doublets with full sleeves and a waistline that pointed down with long tabs that was worn with full breeche...